By Sean McDaniel: Journeyman fighter light welterweight Emanuel Augustus (37-29-6, 19 KOs) struggled badly last night in defeating Jun Paderna (10-11-2, 4 KOs) by a six-round unanimous decision at the Central Coast Leagues Club, Gosford, in New South Wales, Australia. The final scores were 59-55, 60-55 and 60-54. Though the scores were essentially one-sided for Augustus, the fight was much closer than that, with Paderna appearing to do enough to win the fight based on his harder – and much more numerous shots landed in the fight.
However, Augustus, 33, the big-named fighter in the bout, the one that was expected to win, appeared to be the beneficiary of some very kind scores. Augustus looked slow, weak and out of shape, barely able to fire back at times against the quicker and much more powerful Paderna. For me, it was shocking to see how much Augustus had degenerated since I’d seen him last fight, in October 2005 against Herman Ngoudjo, a fight that Augustus ended up losing. Back then, though still losing most of his fights, Augustus still had good speed and a decent work rate. Not anymore, at least not what I saw of him against Paderna last night. Augustus was beaten to the punch often, getting hit with whistling shots from the short, round 5’5″ Paderna, who fought much better than he looked.
After several rounds of taking big shots and not being able to do much, Augustus resorted to dancing while he fought for most of the remainder of the bout, using weird dance steps and angles to confuse Paderna at times. This strategy seemed to work somewhat only because Paderna no doubt had never seen it before and didn’t know how to counteract it. In a way, it seemed much worse than fighting a southpaw, because Augustus was doing all kinds of crazy steps, turning one way while punching from another. I frankly have never seen anything like it, and clearly neither has Paderna. However, Augustus still wasn’t punching enough to win any of the rounds, and even though he was making Paderna miss a lot of his shots, Augustus was still getting hit with some big shots from rounds four though six.
I had Paderna narrowly winning the first three round, though the only reason it was narrow was because of how good Augustus looked on defense. He looked extraordinary as he ducked, leaned and moved his torso to avoid big shots from Paderna. Even when he was hit, he’d smile and taunt Paderna, showing that he wasn’t hurt nor effected by the shots. This seemed to anger Paderna, who threw even harder shots and found his target more often than not. The pro-Augustus crowd seemed not to care that he was appearing to lose the fight, as they continued to cheer for him regardless of how bad he was looking at the time.
In the 4th round, I figured that Augustus had finally warmed up, that he was going to start punching a lot more often. He did, a little, throwing a lot of slow rights and lefts, while reminding me eerily of an old, decrepit Muhammed Ali at the end stage of his career. He continued to dance a lot in the round, and it left me with the impression that he was doing this to distract from how slowed his hand speed had become. I can’t say it enough, Augustus looked terribly slow and only a shell of his former self.
In the 5th and 6th rounds, Augustus began to land more shots, a little more than Paderna, yet Augustus’ shots were much weaker and slower than Paderna’s. I couldn’t rightfully give Augustus any of those rounds because of this, and believe me I wanted to, as he is an entertaining fighter in a clownish kind of way. However, as good as his skills are, I couldn’t get beyond his poor work rate, slow hand speed and his weak punches. In the end, I had Paderna winning by a significant margin. I think Augustus is fighting on borrowed time, as he probably should have retired a couple of years ago. He may be able to squeak by soft opposition like this, but if he fights anyone near the quality of opponent that he used to, he’ll be soundly defeated like he never was before.
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